American Thought Leaders - The Monument That Almost Wasn’t: The Remarkable Story Behind Canada’s Anti-Communist Memorial | Ludwik Klimkowski

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

A few months ago, Canada unveiled its national memorial to the millions of victims of communism.In this episode, Ludwik Klimkowski, chair of the Tribute of Liberty, gives us a tour of the memorial and reveals the 17-year battle to realize it as the group navigated changing political winds.“This is a memorial to those who still struggle. This is the memorial given to those who still want to escape. This is the memorial to those who are still sitting in prison, whose organs are being harvested,” Klimkowski says.The memorial was inaugurated last year, although the final elements on the Wall of Remembrance are still under development.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

This is a memorial to those who still struggle. This is the memorial given to those who still want to escape. This is the memorial to those who are still sitting in prison, whose organs are being harvested. Recently, Canada unveiled its National Memorial to the Millions of Victims of Communism. In this episode, we sit down with Ludwig Klimkowski, chair of the Memorial to Victims of Communism, Canada, a land of communism. In this episode, we sit down with Ludwig Klimkowski, chair of the Memorial to Victims of Communism, Canada, a land of refuge. We discuss the 17-year battle to realize this national monument and why it matters. To have this common-memory place in the heart of our

nation is really, really nice. The final elements on the wall of remembrance are still under development. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Ludwig Klinkowski, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you, Jan. Thank you. It's a great pleasure for me as well. So the ideology of communism is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide. There's plentiful immigrants in Canada and the United States from these countries where all this has happened. But the memorials to the victims of this ideology are almost nowhere to be seen. Why is that? For a variety of reasons. Number one, we need to acknowledge that communism has not ended. The perpetrators are still doing the evil deeds even today as we speak. And unlike, for example, the

case of Holocaust, which lasted only for a certain number of years and it was concluded victoriously and you can come back to the places of crime and you can put up the monuments to commemorate and to say never again, the story of communism is a bit more complicated. It continues and clearly in countries like North Korea, Vietnam, China, you wouldn't think that they will allow any of those monuments to exist. And yet in North America, we are somehow adjusted to the new way of life. Many immigrants, just like myself, they have the tendency of leaving certain things behind. It's almost like the greatest generation in America, the soldiers that came back after

the Second World War. You had such a fantastic documentaries about it where they just didn't want to talk about what happened to them during the combat years. I think we are dealing with the same dilemma both in the United States and in Canada. We don't recognize the evils of communism unless they are being eloquently called out, just like President Ronald Reagan used to do. I think that generation has passed too. And we do also have rather unhealthy tendencies on concentrating on folk heroes and glorifying them without even knowing who they are.

The best example is the cult of Shahevara. Would people know that he's been perpetrating murder against the Bolivian peasants and he's personally responsible for slaughter of thousands of innocents? We don't. And because we don't, it is a bit more challenging to put up the monuments and say, look at this, remember this. And unlike the United States and Canada, our society, the breakdown of the society is such that until just very recently with the massive immigration that we experienced over the last couple of years,

we've claimed that a full quarter, 25% of Canadian society, is composed by people who either survived or escaped the communist oppression. There's no country like Canada anywhere on this planet where 25% of people who live in that country would escape communism to find the safety and refuge in the wonderful mosaic of countries like Canada and the United States. It's particularly poignant that here in Ottawa, there is now, after a great many years, a memorial to the victims of communism, also known as Tribute to Liberty. And I know because I've been following it very closely all these years, I'm, for full disclosure, a tiny donor to it. And a good friend of it.

Yes, and a good friend of it, of course. But at some points, we weren't even sure if it would happen. And that itself is astonishing. So tell me the story of this memorial, the saga. Yes, it is quite unusual and unlikely for the memorial devoted to the memory of victims of communism to be built in Canada of all the places. So the idea began because we were in the lockstep, almost in the lockstep, with the wonderful, well-meaning memorial to the victims of Holocaust. My personal hero, Saint Paul John II, basically suggested that the 20th century was the century of tears. And they were tears because of Holocaust and communism.

Because Ottawa erected the memorial to the victims of Holocaust, it was just logical that we should have a balance, not that we would compete with each other, but the balance of memory given to so many refugees and so many immigrants that found refuge in Canada. And John Paul, he always talked about not being afraid, you know, really putting up your own life and your own being, if you will, in a devotion to something that is bigger than you. So the origins of this are quite long. This is 2008. So then the group of volunteers which established the tribute to Liberty, both Koreans, Vietnamese,

and Central and Eastern Europeans, we wanted to have this place of memory for all of us, one united place. And obviously Ottawa, capital city of Canada, is famous for having national memorials. First number of years was quite challenging in terms of fundraising and really demonstrating that this particular project, which is funded in conjunction with the federal government, can actually stand on its own. And in 2012, Divine Intervention tapped me on the shoulder, and I showed up with perhaps a different set of skills, and this is where you and I, we began that journey together.

The idea was to not to compete with the Lady Liberty in Washington, D.C.,, at least with this memorial, we've got something in Canada that it's ten times bigger than an American thing. And I think that was a funny thing too, that the memorial devoted to the memory of victims of communism in Canada, in, within the Parliamentary Precinct of Ottawa, which is the equivalent of the mall in Washington DC, in terms of its importance and prominence, is like there's no other. This is the biggest memorial, and it's designed in such a way that it's all inclusive. It gives every community, any community, a really

distinctive chance to claim its own ownership on it. There were moments where there was questions if this would even go ahead at all. To a certain extent. Why? What happened? One may say, quite honestly, that the people in power in Canada, some of them, not all of them, were closely inclined to what we can say, a Marxist-Leninist ideology.

So for them, being in a position of power, to see the memorial being executed, built, and established in Ottawa was at least an uneasy thing. So initially in 2015 the location was changed to perhaps make it a bit less visible if you will. Coincidences are wonderful. It happens that this place where the memorial, viewers will see, is placed placed today is actually in terms of viewership much much more accessible and much better. The Confederation Boulevard runs through Heart of Ottawa gives a quite unique exposure to components of light related to this memorial at night so even for the accidental witness of this memorial, today's location, in my mind, is wonderfully better.

Well, why don't we, let's go out to the memorial and check it out. Sure, absolutely. Welcome to the heart of this nation. You cannot be more central in Canada than this spot. Because we are downtown. Behind us, you can see the buildings of this nation. You cannot be most central in Canada than this spot because we are downtown. Behind us you can see the buildings of the Parliament. In front of us there's a new newly developed second downtown of Ottawa if

you will. It's still in the planning process but this will be a new home to our major hockey team Ottawa Senators and there's a large development. We've recently been crushed by the Maple Leafs. Don't even go there. So in terms of foot traffic, in terms of coincidental visitors, it's perfectly placed because it invites you to come and check it out. This is a Canadian equivalent of American Mall between the Congress of the United States and the Lincoln Memorial and typically you need a special permission to get anything built both in Washington and it is the

same in Ottawa so to have this common member place in the heart of our nation is really really nice. This is the wall of our nation is really, really nice. This is the wall of remembrance, and it's divided into two separate parts. This is the front. These two spots are reserved for official interpretation of what this memorial is all about. That interpretation on this side will be in both official languages. And that side is devoted to the largest, the

most generous participants in this project. So both organizations as well as individuals who made rather significant donations both of time and money. In the back you will see eventually the mosaic of names devoted to the grassroots level, the kind of... Yeah, the thing that I was involved. Yechelik and Klimkowski and all the others, that we go there. The idea was to collect stories of a thousand, one thousand, just one thousand Canadians

and tell the visitors who will come to visit here why they found refuge in Canada, why did they come and why their family escaped communism. And I said, I'm the first one with my donation and my story, I want to join 999 others to join me, so this would be a thousand, and a thousand is just a tiny, tiny percentage of a hundred million people that were killed by communism since the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution in

1917. We clearly cannot put every name of every victim from around the globe, so so we came to the different communities and we said listen here is the idea why don't you just tell us what your family story is all about? We ended up with 600 distinctive names that we would know and recognize as those who were engaged in fighting against communism. They were victims of communism. But above all, Jan, this is really devoted to those who found home here. What are these actual names going to look like here?

I'm trying to imagine. So there'll be small plaques. And as you can imagine, they need to be, there'll be a large plate to which individual names are basically technically screwed on. They are not placed alphabetically. They are not placed by ethnicity or religion. They represent the true Canadian mosaic. So the idea is that at the end of the world, there'll be a QR code which you can scan.

And you can type in on your phone the name of the individual that you'd like to explore. And then that is a wonderful tool of education and exploration for all of us. I mean, this is so important. This is so important to me. Thank you for making this happen. My pleasure. So why don't you kind of tell me a little bit about what all these things mean, all these tubes? Those bronze rods. And obviously, I'm speaking on behalf of the artist who won the competition because that's he verbalized this in the best way. Right. This represents the Living Calendar and the Living

Calendar, the main theme of this is to come from the darkness of winter, the solstice of winter, which is here, 22nd of December, all the way to the sunny day like we are experiencing today. And the analogy is that it's the vast darkness of oppression of communism versus the light. Light is life. Life is in Canada because you're enjoying your prosperity, your freedom and democracy. We're following the dates here. Right. And every single day of the year is at the plateau of this memorial. So for example, we move to, let's say, April the 30th. The April the 30th for the Vietnamese community in Canada and globally is the day of the fall

of Saigon where life of Vietnamese people has changed. So the idea again is that every single community can come and commemorate the importance of their own individual dates. The calendar is vast, right? It's 365 days. So you will see June 4th is a special date for the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in China. But it's also the day of freedom of the solidarity people because the June 4th of 1989 same day led to the new elections, semi-democratic elections that arguably led to the fall of communism in Europe later in November of the same year.

So clearly having this long calendar and the space to really pay attention to your own dates, but also to use this as an educational tool for other communities, that's pretty cool. tool for other communities. That's pretty cool. So you see this is the one of the few hundred mementos that the people on the wall of remembrance have received. And if you see the top piece here, it's taken from the bronze routes that are within this vast memorial. And every single piece is distinct. It is different, it has a different cut.

It's almost like being at the Berlin Wall in 1989 and chiseling your own piece and just keep it for the next generations to cherish. So technically, your family, you, you possess a living piece from Ottawa, from this Canadian memorial to the victims of crime. Thank you for showing me this incredible monument. But also, the design needed to be changed. Now, why is that? It was changed because the government decided to do so. I think the change of the government is a reflection of the change of ownership. And the previous design was a bit more explicit. It was almost poking you in the eye. The design was obviously in terms of architectural deliver, it shrunk, but it was vivid. It really talked

about victims. And I can only assume that the government, the new government in power at that time decided that that's not the best image that they want. Initially, I was struggling with this idea because as you can imagine, me being obsessed with this project and leading this for quite a long time, it was almost like someone just chopped me off, so to speak. But then eventually I grew to embrace today's design and I think that because the Ark of Membrer is so unique in terms of architectural design,

it potentially can even stimulate more conversations. And clearly, we need to recognize this, Jan, that any memorial, any monument, when it's erected, it should be erected in a way that it sparks conversations. It provokes you to think about why this memorial is here and what's the purpose of it. I'll give you one example. There's a wonderful monument of General Teddeus Kościuszko in Lafayette Square in Washington facing the White House. The average individual would not know why.

But yet that memorial, that monument of General is placed there for a specific reason. And if someone wants to find out why, well, that's a thought-provoking placement and a monument. Tadeusz Kościuszko, of course, some people know him as Kasiasko, because that's the name of the bridge on the BQE in New York City. But Tadeusz Kościuszko was a Polish general. He came to fight in the American Revolution. He was a fort builder, built West Point. He also taught them how to fight and was one of the most trusted generals of George Washington. We obviously wanted to replicate this kind of a feeling with the Memorial in Ottawa.

For your viewership, this is a really important point. I have always been in awe of the American families who come to visit the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. That memorial created a pilgrimage of multiple generations. The Vietnam War has ended many years ago, and yet the American families come to visit the fallen from the first one to the last one and they come up to the memorial and they scribble the name and they frame that piece of paper, they take it back to Austin, Texas, to Timbuktu, wherever they go. The idea was that we need to erect the place that would spark the same pilgrimage, the same need for a family.

If you have a small Chinese immigrant family that lives in Chilliwack, British Columbia, and the school trip brings them here, they can find their own family. They can replicate the same experience. That child can come back to the community and say, look, this is the name of my grandfather. He came here and he gave us the prosperity and safety and really good life in Canada because he didn't want to be oppressed in mainland China. So I think the design and its meaning has evolved, but I don't think that today's memorial is any less in terms of its design,

location, and it's our baby. We grew to love it. It was inaugurated in the fall, but this year you're going to have some kind of grand opening or something? Well, as you can imagine, clearly we just had a federal election in Canada, and in terms of execution of the final elements of this memorial, that it's always dependent on the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the mosaic of names, if you will, is still under development and conversation, and here is why, and this is is really important point too. There are certain bureaucrats that assume that if your name cannot be verified using Google that it means you must be hiding something. So because

the commemoration is devoted to a large number of individuals whose verification cannot be completed, due diligence is beyond difficult, there's a resistance from the federal government employees, if you will, that would, in terms of risk mitigation, to avoid having another Humka, Nazi sympathizer or collaborator among those names that are undefined. And clearly we as a proponents of the memorial were trying to explain to them that if you have any difficulty with the verification of any, we can put them aside for the time being. But clearly you cannot deny the existence of Waclaw Havel, of Dalai Lama, of Father Jerzy Popiushko, of others of that sort. So that's where the second unveiling, if you will, the opening should take place.

We don't know when, but that would be the major educational component. If you do have a set of names that everyone feels comfortable with, then at least you can learn the story of the people who fought against communism or survived communism in that limited way, but still learn. And that's really important. Tell me about this, because this was a big thing in the Canadian press for a while, that there was the controversy with something about there being Nazi sympathizers, an attempt to put Nazi sympathizers on this wall of remembrance. Explain to me the reality of that. The reality is that one of the communities in

Alberta decided to make a small donation and they commemorated someone on our website, not on the memorial, nowhere near the memorial itself. On our website, with a small donation, which did not warrant the verification and disclosure. And that name was given to the infamous Ukrainian general who collaborated with SS Nazi powers during the Second World War. He was obviously promptly removed, but the stigmatisation was used by those who are clearly opposed to the existence of the memorial itself.

We just have the difficulty with the perception, with the notion that it's being perpetrated by those who don't want to see this memorial to exist at all, where they say, well, if you cannot verify who the person XYZ is, well, it means that they must be a Nazi, or at least a collaborator, which is far from the truth. But then how can we overcome that objection? And in Canada, as well as in the United States, a lot of historians and individuals

with a professional background that can be used for that type of a verification process, vast majority of them are white Anglo-Saxon liberal professors from a large university and they have no idea how to verify a Korean, a Vietnamese or a Chinese name. How can you square that? I ask that question because the notion is people who think of because the notion is people who think of this memorial think through the prism of middle-aged, you know, Canadian of European background. This is a memorial to those who still struggle. This is the memorial given to those who still want to escape.

This is the memorial to those who are still sitting in prison, whose organs are being harvested. Let's not forget the really important point, which is not everything is European-centric. And especially in countries like the United States and Canada, we need to take this beyond. This is also why I was so happy that in Washington you have a Lady Liberty from the Tiananmen Square that represents the victims of communism.

Such a symbolic icon, don't you think? And no one in the United States or in Canada will even think about the notion of collaboration of certain Chinese individuals with the Chinese communist government. It is about the memory of all of us. You were actually, as a younger man, got to see Pope John Paul II when he came to Poland, famously under communism, and arguably changed the world. Tell me a little bit about your story, how you ended up in Canada. Maybe tell me a little starting off with a little bit about that day and how it is that you came to Canada and

doing the work that you do now. I think not only because of the patriotic background of my own family. I was born, grew up and educated in Warsaw, capital city of Poland, very much within Armia Krajowa, which is the underground Polish army during the Second World War, ethos and the resistance against both Germans, and by the way, I don't call them Nazis, I call them Germans, and obviously the Soviets, the Russians and others, who tore the city apart, basically, not only burned down the majority of the city to the ground,

but the city of Warsaw is like the phoenix who grew back from the ashes. The resilience of it is based on multiple factors, and one of those factors are clearly people like St. John Paul II. And when he was elected in 1978, his election to the highest office of Catholic Church was not well received in Moscow. It was actually not even well received in his native Poland. Because people in power were deadly afraid of the spiritual awakening of the nation. And the influence of Polish Church in Poland is like no other. The country was able to survive more than 120 years of partition and non-existence because

of the traditions related to Polish Church. So when he came to visit, he did the first Mass for the youth. And clearly back then I did qualify as youth. So I walked for miles from my own parish in Warsaw to overnight to have the Mass with him. And it was glorious. But it was youth-oriented. youth oriented. And the next mass was on one of the largest squares in Warsaw where unbeknownst to communist powers as many as a million people showed up. And many of them, obviously to get to that mass you needed to receive certain pass and invitation. And Jan, you wouldn't believe, but my wife Isabella,

knowing that you and I will meet, she was going through certain documents and mementos of ours, and she actually found something. And she found my own pass to the first mass in Warsaw, conducted by Holy John Paul the second in June of 1979 He said to all of us This is my land. This is your land. It's our land

Don't be afraid Do not be afraid and guess what? Do not be afraid. And guess what? People were afraid no more. And this is why very next year the Solidarity Movement began. This is where the resistance of 10 million Poles finally was vocal and was different in a way because Poland, just like Czechoslovakia and Hungary and other countries, we went through uprisings almost like over a few years.

But that one was unique because the intelligentsia was hand in hand with the working class. The people who were working on farms and in small villages, they were united. All of us were united. Why were we united? Well, because of this. And then, if you look at your life and you become relatively successful in your professional life, and you have a life of kindness and generosity in the new adopted homeland of yours, which is to me Canada, and as you know,

I have lived here for most of my life. You do have a sense of obligation to give back, to follow that spirit, and this is why, remembering the story of one of his priests the father Jerzy Popiełuszko who was murdered in 1984 by secret police it's one of those symbols of Polish resistance that people like me find beyond Holly. His sacrifice, his message, his masses, he was not afraid. He was never afraid. The witness that became a rather significant that became a rather significant person in persecution of those who perpetrated his murder, confirmed that Father Jerzy Popiełuszko was never afraid, even when he was dying.

So in my tiny, tiny, small piece of my existence, I didn't want to be afraid either. And both in in Poland as well as after coming back, coming to Canada, I felt that obviously there's something more beyond the necessities of life and the rather prosperous life that I have witnessed in this country. You need to give back. I used to claim Jan that there's no other Canadian project that would be as diverse ethnically and on many measures as this one is. And it's a wonderful reflection of what the humble North American societies, both in the United States and

Canada, are. You actually mentioned to me that the Vietnamese community was particularly responsible for seeing this happen. Right. And it warms my heart for one specific reason. And we've talked about this too. If you are really wealthy, if you're rich, you can easily write the check for 100,000 bucks and make a donation that makes you feel good. But if you are making a donation of 20 or 50 bucks and it means that you have to skip your meal, that's something completely different. And I'm not suggesting that the Vietnamese community in Canada needed to skip the meal to make the donation. But they were the most frequent donors in a small amount.

But they reflected something that I was longing for, which is the true grassroots movement in this country. Because remember, the memorial, the monument, that's a physical structure, right? In front of you, you have me as the spiritual reflection of it. That there are lots and lots of Canadians, unsung heroes, who feel like me, who think like me, who want this country to be free, to be better, to be the land of opportunities for all, not the land of equal outcomes, but the land of equal opportunity. And I think the idea that the Vietnamese community

will rise up the way that it has, is that reflection that we came here under many circumstances against our will, but we did adopt this land and we want to make it better. You mentioned earlier in our conversation something incredibly important, that this memorial is not just to past victims of communism, but to the current victims of communism. And the future. And perhaps as future as well. Explain that to me, how that manifests and how that's important in the work that's being done around the memorial. The Living Calendar, the Arc of Membrane. Well clearly we have 365 different dates and some of those dates are occupied by the events

that are already defined. We know that happened. Well, there will be more. So we sadly, we have a room for them too. And why would we reserve the room for them too. And why would we reserve the room for them? Well, clearly people who are less than sympathetic to this idea, they should be given the opportunity to learn from it. So one of the main reasons for the existence of this memorial

is to educate and say if you feel the symbols of Nazism are bad because of the Holocaust and all the things that German Nazis did to us, well you better think that the Soviet communism, the Chinese communism and communism at large is not only as bad, but it exists and continues to exist and it continues to imprison and to kill. My hashtag always is communism kills and there's no way of escaping this. No matter where you are, even if you, you know, young, many Canadians find their glory days in the middle of January on the beaches of Cuba, but they don't see what is happening in the background where the Cuban resistance movement individuals are being imprisoned

by today's regime. We need to educate our fellow neighbors and friends and people that we work with. That problem exists. Because I focus so much on the United States in my work, I don't often talk about the level of Chinese Communist Party infiltration in Canada. You have some amazing reporters here. Of course, the Canadian Epoch Times reports on this quite a bit. Sam Cooper comes to mind. He kind of almost exclusively these days reports on this issue. How do you view this? When Germany was unified, the Stasi documents, the secret police files of all the agents and all the individuals, they were unleashed, they were uncovered, they were subject of studies and those studies with no

ambiguity showed instances of both from academia, sports, culture, any walk of life, East Germans were purposely sent to West Germany to spy, to infiltrate the German government. Famously, a secretary, a personal secretary to Chancellor Wilhelm Brand, this is many, many years ago, was found out to be a KGB agent. German, German born. So obviously we know by the virtue of looking at the archives and also by the virtue of looking at the archives in Moscow, that regimes, no matter which country they come from, made this a national policy to send their own individuals of different ranks, different professions,

to basically infiltrate and impose their own views on the societies in the West. And I've mentioned to you that sometimes because of our Western liberal historic background, we are gullible. We don't anticipate the evils of communism to execute something that we find immoral or against the rule of law. And yet the Chinese are sending today, and we know this for sure in terms of interference in the Canadian elections, a vast number of Chinese individuals who would be no different than the sportsmen or a musician or whoever with the East Germany that went to West Germany before the unification and a large number of Russian intellectuals who were coming to the United States to teach at American universities.

Look what happened to American universities over the last 20 years, right? That will obviously continue unless people like you, the programs like yours, advocacy of people like me would say, don't be gullible. Now, having said that, we obviously don't want to stigmatize the innocents. There are plenty of individuals who came to this country who have nothing to do. Let me comment on this actually, because the Chinese model of infiltration and intelligence gathering, of course, there's these types of exactly the sorts of agents that you described, a very deliberate task. But the Chinese approach to intelligence gathering is basically kind of all of the above.

Everyone is incentivized heavily, right, in various ways to do it. That doesn't mean everybody does. They could. Their social credits, the scores will go up if they do. If they're in very prominent positions and they're not bringing anything back, someone will start asking questions. This is just their reality, right? But you're right. we are a free society. We don't go around and blanket stigmatize people. This presents, frankly, a huge problem for us as a free society. Because we assume, and this is the second question, we have this rule here, innocent until proven guilty. This is our approach. We think like that. But that's what I mean by the Western liberal way of thinking. We are so embedded in the Magda

Carta and the rule of law and the set of ethical values that we basically think of each other that there's no reason for us not to obey what is commonly accepted, right? Well, except when you're a communist. Right? And there's also another aspect which is really important in that conversation, which is if you live here and your sister or your cousin is back in China, and because of your actions, they can be elevated in the credit score or attain another important position, is your family tie stronger, more important than the sense of belonging to your new country. That's a challenging question. But obviously the moral answer is you just don't do evil things. And yet if you live under that regime for 60, 70 years, sometimes longer, the idea of moral cleanseness of your soul is getting clouded,

more clouded every year. And I think there's something, there's another conversation to be had, but there's something to be said about, they call it the Soviet psyche. The person who grew up under communism is not the same person that grew up in the Western democratic rule of law-based system. Their perception of day-to-day life and the morality and all the other stuff is just clouded. Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is this idea of the distinction between collective rights and individual rights. What I mean here is, we have this idea, I think in the US and Canada, that it's good and right to do things for the greater good. This idea of the greater

good, in that sometimes some individuals get sacrificed for the benefit of the many, hence the distinction between collective and individual rights. I've been an investment advisor for all of my professional life, almost 35 years. I am a lifelong student of a Scottish professor, Adam Smith. I'm of the school that the betterment of individual benefits the society, not the other way around. If you take care of yourself and you do the things that are right and you are on the way, on the journey of making your life, your own life and the

life of your closest family as good as it is possible, then that will lead you to helping your neighbors, your immediate society in your town, in your city, and then that rises up to the nationhood. There's something to be said about the idea that the individual well-being, the wellness and the financial security leads to a charitable behavior and then that charitable behavior elevates the society at large. Why am I saying this? Because obviously that is in complete contrast to the notion that there's an elite of people that know better and they will tell you what's good for the society and there's an elite of people that know better and they will tell you what's good for the society and what's not

and they will sacrifice you when the time for sacrifice is required. Required by whom? Who makes that decision? Is it a grassroots decision or is it a top-down decision? Well, typically it is a top-down decision. The lockdowns during the COVID, that's the best example of the top-down direction and the decision. And clearly it is based on the notion that we know nothing and we should listen to some people that know better.

To put the restriction and prohibition from you travelling to your own cottage by the lake where there's no one in the vicinity for a few miles at least, that's ridiculous. So I'm of the school where there should be some kind of a fine balance between, I think that's what life is always about, but I am also very much, not only through economics, but in terms of your faith, the set of your values

of the school that it's the family unit that makes it happen. The love between the father and the mother and the next generation of children, the set of rules and values that you give to the next generation will allow that generation to pass this along to the next generation of children. The set of rules and values that you give to the next generation will allow that generation to pass this along to the next generation. And if you have a breakdown of that family unit, because the communist regime or any

elite-based regime says, we don't like this because we don't have enough control. And for the betterment of the society, we're going to divide that unit. I have a problem with that. I think you hit the nail on the head. In this situation where there's this view of collective rights, which by the way, that's the view that the Chinese Communist Party explicitly is promoting in places like, for example, the UN Human Rights Commission, which it's a member of, curiously. Someone gets to choose. Someone there is deciding who is more valued and who is potentially expendable. valued and who is potentially expendable. Understanding that distinction, I suspect, is very important for us.

William Styron wrote a book called Selfie's Choice, and it was about the mother and a couple of her children. And she was to choose which of the two is to live and which one to die. Is this the society that we want? Is this the society that the Chinese government can impose on us and tell you which child of yours is to be sacrificed? And I know I'm exaggerating this, but I'm doing this to make the point.

I think the beauty, the benefit of living in North America, both in the United States and in Canada, is that we can openly say, no, we don't agree to that. Ludwig, this has been an amazing conversation. Final thought as we finish up? I don't know how this happened. I find it a blessing. But the Memorial to Victims of Communism in Ottawa exists. And I would be sincerely grateful to all Canadian and American families, if you can find in your heart to travel to Ottawa at some point, to visit that memorial, and to just

take this message and be our ambassadors, not only in North America, but also in the countries that your ancestors came from. Spread the news. Be grateful for what I'm grateful for, which is the ultimate exhibit of the freedom that I get to exercise. As a chair of tributeute to Liberty, Memorial to Victims of Communism Canada, Land of Refuge, that gives me immense pleasure in knowing

that there are good people out there who want this memorial to come alive. Ludwig Klinkowski, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you. Thank you all for joining Ludwig Klinkowski, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you. Thank you all for joining Ludwig Klinkowski and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.